


Tainted Blood

by DeathSponge



Category: Whitechapel (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 11:38:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11103813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeathSponge/pseuds/DeathSponge
Summary: The first time Miles saw Chandler lose his cool was during what had promised to be an open-and-shut case.





	Tainted Blood

DC Ray Miles was good in a crisis, generally speaking.

Some mornings, Mansell would slouch into the station, stinking of gin with red-rimmed eyes and his tie crumpled around his neck like a noose. His clothes would be creased to buggery, and quite obviously unwashed, and Miles just knew that Chandler would put his foot in it and say something scathing. It wasn't that Chandler was cruel. Not at all; nobody agonised more over the welfare of his team than DI Chandler. It was more that the suited, booted inspector was simply oblivious to the idea of cleanliness coming second to anything, especially something as trivial as Mansell’s thirtieth break-up of the year.

After Chandler made his customary pointed comments about Mansell's clear need for an ironing board and swept away into his office in a blur of shined shoes and gleaming hair, Miles would saunter over to Finlay’s messy desk, and give him the old ‘clap on the shoulder’ and “if you need to talk...” look.

Miles would make it his job to keep one eye on the penitent man from a distance for a week or so, just sneaking glimpses in between any Chandler-eureka moments or mutilated corpse arrivals. Mansell would undoubtedly brighten up after the third or fourth day, and by the sixth the cycle would begin again.

Another bird, another break-up. So on and so forth.

When Kent had crises of confidence, or when his pining for his uptight, upright DI became too painful for everybody else to bear witness, Miles would take Kent to the pub on the corner. He'd sit him down, buy him a pint and let the boy talk. That's all Kent needed, really. Somebody to talk to. Vent his post-adolescent frustrations to.

Kent was a fatherless boy with way too many self-identity issues to count, and he just needed a father figure to cajole him back into a stable mind-set, that was all. Miles could play father very well; it was a role he was born for.

Riley was different. A strong woman on the whole, though she'd get a bit weepy from time to time. Usually, it happened with cases involving little kiddies, like the time they'd investigated the murder of a five year-old boy found in a bin bag, outside a high-rise flat on a nearby estate. Riley had sobbed and sobbed after they'd buried his little body and frogmarched his bastard of a dad to court on a murder charge. All Miles knew how to do was give her a long hug, and a pat on the back, knowing tomorrow she'd be back with that smirk on her face, cracking jokes with the rest of them.

Chandler, on the other hand... Chandler was an enigma, a puzzle with too many pieces, a mess of emotions concealed under a stiff back, a sharply cut suit jacket and immaculately kept hair.

The first time Miles saw Chandler lose his cool was during what had promised to be an open-and-shut case.

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure if I should finish this weird little drabble. I have a few ideas, but we'll have to see if I can think of any ideas/prose I can publish without embarrassment!


End file.
